Head-to-head comparison based on real production benchmarks with Gulf Arabic callers.
ElevenLabs' realtime STT offering — poor quality and slow for Arabic.
Ultra-fast Arabic STT with poor transcription quality.
Described as 'shit quality' in production testing. Not viable for Arabic.
Users had to repeat themselves frequently. Quality unacceptable for production use.
| Feature | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 | Speechmatics |
|---|---|---|
| Real-time streaming transcription | ✓ | ✓ |
| Multiple language support | ✓ | ✗ |
| LiveKit inference integration | ✓ | ✗ |
| Configurable endpointing | ✗ | ✓ |
| Standard and enhanced operating points | ✗ | ✓ |
| Custom dictionary | ✗ | ✓ |
| Capability | ElevenLabs Scribe v2 | Speechmatics |
|---|---|---|
| Streaming support | ✓ | ✓ |
| LiveKit plugin | ✓ | ✗ |
| Self-hostable | ✗ | ✓ |
| API style | WebSocket streaming | WebSocket streaming + REST |
| SDKs | Python, Node.js | Python, Node.js |
Poor quality and poor latency for Arabic. Not recommended for any Arabic STT use case.
Amazingly fast but Arabic quality is too poor for production. The speed advantage is meaningless when users have to repeat themselves.
Speechmatics is faster with an average end-of-utterance delay of 460ms, which is 1540ms faster than ElevenLabs Scribe v2.
ElevenLabs Scribe v2 has a quality rating of 1/5 (Poor). Described as 'shit quality' in production testing. Not viable for Arabic.
Both providers are viable options. ElevenLabs Scribe v2: Poor quality and poor latency for Arabic. Not recommended for any Arabic STT use case. Speechmatics: Amazingly fast but Arabic quality is too poor for production. The speed advantage is meaningless when users have to repeat themselves.
ElevenLabs Scribe v2 starts at $5 per month (Includes STT credits). Speechmatics starts at $0.0042 per minute (Real-time streaming).